Really? I tried GrapheneOS on a Pixel 4A, and without exaggerating or trying to come off sensationalist the experience was really tepid compared to iOS, and even "normal" Android. Stuttering and jerky UI (which often also wanted to take a brief nap), very poor GPU hardware acceleration support, notably worse battery life, loads of things that just didn't work well (or at all) without Gapps, and trying to get Play Services shoe-horned into GrapheneOS was still quite the bug-ridden hassle. Additionally, the Open Camera app produced rubbish results compared to Google's native Android camera app, which matters a lot to me.

I agree the default camera app of Graphine isn't great, but it's picture quality better than the iPhone I came from (iPhone SE gen1)

You should be able to get GCam via Aurora Store by setting the spoofing to a Pixel device, but newer versions of GCam check for something that cannot be spoofed with an app (issue #22 in above github) so you have to get a modded GCam app if you want to user newer versions and use an android rom that does not spoof this.

Also, if you are using a Pixel phone with a non-default flavor of Android, the Google Camera app still works if you download it manually. APKMirror is a trustworthy app source run by Android Police:

https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/camera/

(For Pixel phones using an older Android version, you may have to use an older version of Google Camera if the current version does not work.)

Going back to iPhone as soon as I've got some free time to get everything set up again.

Unrelated, but I'm still very surprised there's no standard way of doing live photos on Android. They really do add a lot to the experience of reviewing old memories and Google has had at least 5 years to catch up.

Pretty sure GrapheneOS doesn't do anything to change GPU h/w acceleration.

The tethering seems to be pretty flakey as well with me often having to reboot the phone.

Maybe it's something to do with OpenGapps? I never installed it or microG, I'm perfectly happy with just Fdroid.

It seems like what you're looking for is CalixOS + microG.

Both are rather strict on having a clean, non rooted, non modified phone. Currently, they both work without any caveats, but I had to install magisk, add them to magisk hide, and use the magisk renaming feature to have them work.

Personally I wouldn't suggest having banking apps on a phone.

You can always use the web browser if you absolutely must access those accounts.

Visa and Mastercard also introduced 3DSecrue system which piggybacks on the same system of confirmations. Vendors are incentivised to adopt it by lower rates.

In essence when paying with card or making a wire transfer (or using some instant transfer method, for example Blik in Poland), you get notification on you phone asking you to confirm operation, even if you initiate it from your account in the browser.

In essence Bank apps became 2FA devices. The only way to avoid it is to opt-out of the App 2FA and use paper one-time code pad. You regularly then get sent a list of codes by snail mail, which you have to type to confirm operations.

They can and do. There are a number of banks where you have absolutely no choice.

Basically, there's a common (government-backed) user identification system which hooks up to interfaces that banks provide. When you're logging in to an online service that requires strict identification of the user (such as ones that would require an official id document if done in person), you first pick the bank you're using, and the service forwards you to the bank's website. Once you log in with your bank credentials, the original requesting website gets informed that you've provided valid login information, and the identity that the login matches with.

I don't know the exact technical details of how that works, but essentially the bank also acts as a user identification service for various official and governmental online services. It's treated as similar to proving your identity with a document, or to signing a document with your signature.

I don't know if this is a common thing in other European countries, but if it is, that might be a reason why the EU has an interest in enforcing 2FA.

You're not strictly required to use a smartphone, as at least my bank has other means of 2FA that satisfy the regulatory requirements, but they are more cumbersome.

Do you live in Denmark perchance?

> I don't know if this is a common thing in other European countries

There is a similar system implemented in Poland and works very well.

There are some rules here that are nonsense, such as know-your-customer laws that force me to enter my home address even when the product or service (say, a concert or train ticket) is delivered to me entirely electronically.

Most of the move to purely electronic payment is driven by the market and the large banks; e.g. in the Netherlands we actually never had laws that force shops to accept cash as payment.

So it's possible to do that with some of the banking apps.

FYI in New Zealand a few banks can provide a device (e.g. RSA SecurID) for proper non-bank 2 factor auth with consumer accounts. However some major banks only use phones for 2FA (app or SMS).

The norms seem to vary considerably depending on country.

Yes, I'm bitter. If there's ever a bank that puts end-user automation first, I'll switch in a second.

However when I really wanted a solution i build a small service that receives the confirmation SMS most banks offers and pushes my balance in a small API.

Vanguard works on my completely google-free phone, although I had to change the OS language to English because w/ Android set to French their app would force the use of commas as the cents separator, then complain that commas are not a valid character. Another fun thing was it uses its own internal camera app, which would focus the preview, then completely ignore the focus setting and take a blurry photo of the check. Eventually I figured out the camera's default focus length and take the photo from that distance.

in addition, you don't need to copy a sim. you can copy a cell tower. which the authorities do all the time, without any warrants, and capture data en-masse. The fake cell tower fits in a backpack.

But it's not just the cops capturing your cell data. It's anyone, they've been doing it for over a decade, and it's cheap and easily accessible.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/vv7zn9/surprise-scans-sugges...

It's basically 2FA for online transactions, which seems very sensible to me.

Edit: to clarify, my comment is about the UK, and it does not happen with most card transactions; "usually" here refers instead to card transactions being the usual trigger (in my experience) for this app-based authentication flow.

Huh? This is not a real thing.

> You can buy a used Pixel 3a for around $80 on Ebay

It's worth noting that GrapheneOS recommend Pixel 4a or newer for best support: https://grapheneos.org/faq#recommended-devices

I also recommend CutTheCord as a Discord client. It's not FOSS because it's based on the official client but it's privacy oriented.

https://gitdab.com/distok/cutthecord

Both Shelter and Insular are effective for isolating your files, contacts, and phone logs in each profile. If you are using a VPN, it is limited to the profile that the VPN app is installed on, and you need to install and run it again on the other profile to cover the apps in that profile.

- Organic Maps which is cleaner than Osmand

- KeepassDX for password management

- AntennaPod for podcasts

- I have a Tutanota email address. Their app is fully open source, downloadable on FDroid's main repos.

I can also recommend BRouter (with OSMand) for bike navigation. It's ugly and hacky, but once it works, bike navigation is much, much better than Gmaps'. E.g. it's not sending you down cobblestone roads all the time.

It's happened to me a lot of times with Google's Maps (with regard to how frequent I use Google's Maps) that I'm looking for something, I KNOW it's there, I'm searching for it (like "groceries" for a grocery store), and the only way Google's Maps would ever show it to me is by zooming it until the ONLY thing on screen is building, and then it does display it.

(Perhaps WhatsApp might work as well, since, IME, it can be sideloaded and will work without a functional Google Play Services.)

I'm confident Whatsapp will work, but I have not tried. Push notifications will not work without Google Play Services.

Discord works perfectly with microG, and has a 3/4 rating without it since notifications will only work if you have microG.

[1] https://plexus.techlore.tech/applications/whats-app

[2] https://www.whatsapp.com/android/

[3] https://plexus.techlore.tech/applications/discord

Push notifications are bad and it drains significantly more battery.

- LeafPic Revived: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.alienpants.leafpicrevive...

- Simple Gallery Pro: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.simplemobiletools.galler...

If you are looking for a hosted service to back up your photos, Stingle is an end-to-end encrypted photo hosting service. Alternatively, you can use Nextcloud to self-host. Both are FOSS on the client side, and Nextcloud is also FOSS on the server side.

- Stingle: https://stingle.org

- Les Pas gallery app for Nextcloud: https://github.com/scubajeff/lespas

Newpipe loads videos much slower than the official app and occasionally fails completely (likely because YouTube changed something).

F-droid (regular, non-root install) shows me notifications to update apps, then when I tap them, I get a "there was a problem parsing the package" - this is a bug that has remained unfixed for over 5 years (https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient/-/issues/669).

It's not impossible to use a FOSS phone, but it's truly painful.

Osmand really isn't bad, sure it's a little bit slower to render but we're talking maybe 500-1000ms on a Pixel 3a.

Regarding F-Droid you're right it is quite buggy, but thankfully once you've got the apps you want you don't really need to use it except to update.

In my personal case though, I would still not use MicroG, and would just leave the app open until I am done using it. This is easier on Android because apps are not suspended in the same manner iOS apps are.

It's important to remember this is only a concern on non-free apps. The FOSS apps have very low power background services that check for notifications without the app running.